Election 2012: Tyranny Of The Synthetic

Our simulacrum of ostensible politics doesn’t conceal any truths. The truth is that there isn’t any. We are stupefied by the brutal collage of jittering, meaningless sensation. That’s the truth. All of which we’ve discussed together here at length before.

That’s not embracing moral or even situational relativism. Our professional conservative friends echo what you, Dear Reader, noted long ago: a Romney ‘victory’ would be a poisoned chalice in any event. Few believe his capacity to govern or control an emboldened Movement.

In the end we happen to be optimists in one narrow sense. We believe a significant number of people yearn for — even if unrecognized — the return of actual Meaning to our culture, our politics and our lives. That we collectively both reject and embrace those rejecting substitution of the false, the symbology, the AutoTuned, the ‘meme’.

Existing politics, however diffuse, can not lead. And may not be able to follow, focus groups and micro-targeted opinion research aside. People craving granular truth are similar to what Apple once said about its customers and market research: they didn’t do any. Because people often don’t know what they want until they see it.

That choice doesn’t exist now. Whatever happens in the Fall of 2012, the synthetic will still be entrenched. Readers here noted that change may not necessarily (or even likely) arrive as a democratic one. The real question is whether anyone would notice.